404 Boundaries and Beyond
hailed from Cochin China and 15 from Siam,^199 indicating the increasing
strength of the regionalized Chinese shipping. The largest portion of this
shipping category, or what John Crawfurd terms “the colonial shipping”,
was operated from the Siamese and Cochin China ports. In the former
case, about 200 junks were βitted out from there. Several of them, with a
tonnage of 300 to 400 tons each, sailed to Singapore annually. At least 81
of the 89 junks trading to China from Siam were constructed in the local
shipyards and were owned by the Chinese settlers. In the trading season
of 1830‒32, approximately 35 junks arrived in Singapore from Cochin
China. These junks were owned by Guangdong migrants.^200
Nevertheless, the presence of western vessels in the region had
introduced a new mode of shipping operation by the mid-nineteenth
century, one that gave the European shippers a seemingly unbeatable
advantage. The wooden junks with structural limitations simply could
not compete with the well-constructed and well-navigated European or
American vessels. John Crawfurd particularly mentions the vulnerability
of the Chinese junks that were prone to frequent shipwrecks. To compare
the two, a western ship could perform three voyages a year between
Batavia and China, whereas a Chinese junk could make the round trip only
once a year. Western vessels had the advantage of modern machinery,
but Chinese junks, relying on favorable monsoon winds, were operated
manually and by a crew ten times larger than that on a western vessel.^201
When more advantages, such as maritime insurance, sailing security,
prevention of pirate attacks, speed and protection offered by the western
vessels in the Chinese Treaty Ports are taken into account, it is not hard
to explain why an increasing number of Chinese shippers, for purely
rational business calculations, opted for western vessels.
Although Chinese junks seemed to be losing their competitive edge
against the western vessels in the long-distance shipping between
Southeast Asia and China, these “primitive” wooden junks were still
playing an important role in intraregional shipping, in a scenario similar
to what had happened on the China coast after 1843. Their presence
in the smaller ports that were beyond the westerners’ purview was
irreplaceable. They provided the indispensable feeder shipping services
- Lim How Seng, Xinjiapo huashe yu huashang, p. 6.
- John Phipps, Practical Treatise on the China and Eastern Trade, pp. 204, 286‒8.
- John Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. 3, pp. 176, 178. However,
Crawfurd contradicted himself when he was describing the features of Chinese
junks in 1830. He says that, notwithstanding their weaknesses, “their pilots are
expert.... During the thirteen year’ acquaintance with this branch of trade, I can
recollect hearing of but four shipwrecks; and in all these instances the crew
were saved.” See John Crawfurd’s testimony, 1830, p. 454.
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